Mikela Review on Chapter of Dreams 4 of 5 stars “When I learned I’d won this book as a giveaway on Booklikes I couldn’t help jumping for joy, then waited with bated breathe until the wonderful day when it arrived for my perusal. Oh, the wait was so worth it, the writing of Ned Hayes’ debut mystery novel is so very good, so much better than I’d dared to expect that I found myself both delighted and surprised. Late one night a dismembered body was discovered in the washroom of a luxury resort near the beautiful Lake Coeur D’Alene in the Pacific Northwest. Matt Worthson, a recovering alcoholic who has lost the respect and backing of his fellow officers, was assigned to investigate and find the killer of the victim, Arlen Bowman,...

Nancy Silk‘s review posted on Nov 10, 13 5 of 5 stars “This is a complex novel that really absorbed me until the end. The story takes place in and about Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. A rustic, rugged landscape of timber and mines. Like the land, the characters in this story are also rugged — each and every one of them having ultimate goals and remorse. The main character, Matt Worthson, sits at Albi’s Bar and Grill. Trying to overcome his taste for hard liquor, he orders coffee. He’s carrying a load of guilt, and his recent sharing experience with ‘Father’ Arlen, a local minister serving the police department when the need arises, seems to somewhat take the load off his back. Matt is a lieutenant for the Bitterroot County...

What is it about the Pacific Northwest that leads some into dark worlds of violence and despair? Had one-time north Idaho journalist Ned Hayes made this tantalizing question the centerpiece of his debut novel, he might have only created a derivative retelling of an all-too-familiar serial killer plot. Instead, he takes the plot for this well-written literary thriller from the historical facts of the still-unsolved Sunshine Mine disaster in 1972, and winds it tight around the troubled central figure of Matt Worthson, a one time candidate for Sheriff in Coeur d’Alene. Worthson, suffering from a broken marriage and a suspect car accident, is pulled into a tangled history of corrupt politics, separatist plots, and powerful interests who control the lucrative Idaho...

The Silver Valley Mining Legacy The “Bitterroot County” portrayed in this story is a fictional one, although the events that transpired in the 1970s and 1980s are very real events with very real consequences. The Silver Valley devastation described in this novel is historically accurate. The only organization actively working to clean up this wonderful wilderness is the Silver Valley Community Resource Center. You can donate to this organization here. To this day, the mystery of the Sunshine Mine Disaster fire has never been solved. Miners Tom Wilkinson and Ron Flory were the only two survivors found in the mine. The 91 men who died in the Sunshine Mine Disaster in May of 1972 are memorialized in a permanent shrine built beside the I-90 highway outside of...